The Rake's Bargain by Lucy Ashford

Author:Lucy Ashford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Instead of riding straight on to the house, Beau took a track that led up to open pastureland, where he set his strong horse at a gallop until he’d succeeded—to a point—in getting under control the mixture of heated emotions that seethed in his chest.

When he’d seen that lone figure in the lake, the years had vanished and one of his blackest ever memories had emerged—Simon close to drowning, and Beau plunging in to save him, and Simon fighting him off, whispering, You always have to be there for me, don’t you, big brother? Do I have to be for ever in your debt? Isn’t it enough that you’re going to inherit a dukedom, and I’ll have nothing?

It was eleven years ago, and Beau had been home from Oxford—clever, ruthless, ambitious, and well placed to succeed his cold-hearted father some day as heir to one of the country’s richest titles. Simon had already begun to resent him bitterly. ‘Damn you, Beau. Damn you,’ he’d whispered as he lay choking on the lake side.

This time the person in the water had been the girl. She, clearly, had been in no danger—except from him. He had been shocked at how swiftly his anger had turned to equally powerful lust.

Had he really tried to blame her for the kiss? Who was he trying to fool? His own physical need had all but consumed him—good God, his loins still ached from his fierce arousal—but he had to remember that lust must have no part in his relationship with the girl.

He was the fifth Duke of Cirencester, and he had many wrongs to put right. His brother had been lured into marriage with a slut, and Paulette’s cousin Deborah must be of the same breed—look at those books of erotic pictures, for heaven’s sake. But—and Beau dragged his hand through his hair—why, then, had her kiss been so damned sweet?

Why was it that she’d looked somehow so lost and alone for a brief moment that she’d aroused in him a series of long-buried feelings—tenderness...pity, even—that Beau was hardly aware he still possessed?

Emotion is weakness, he reminded himself fiercely. He reminded himself also she hadn’t looked at all lost when she was giving orders in the forest to the pair of vagabonds who’d knocked him from his horse, and trussed him up. Neither had she looked lost when she’d pretended moments later to melt to his kiss, in order to cleverly distract him from the fact that her men were creeping up behind him.

But he’d been watching her these past few days. He’d seen how Miss Deborah O’Hara had taken to slowly walking through the great rooms of the house by herself, often choosing to linger in the sculpture room and gaze at the classical statues that Beau’s father had collected. Sometimes, if Beau was passing along the mezzanine gallery to his own rooms, he would pause in the shadows and look down on her, because he found himself thinking in the oddest way that when she was on her own, she became a different person.

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